


de futuro

by thedevilchicken



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Violence, Bruises, Characters are forced to fight side by side in a gladiatorial arena, Come as Lube, Dubious Consent, Gladiators, Injury, M/M, Pining, Rape/Non-con Elements, Scars, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:28:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29012817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: In the ludus of Sextus Gavius, the men are named for heroes. Ajax is the largest of them, and the strongest; Troilus is far from being either of those things, though he comes to be quite deadly nonetheless.Ajax tells himself they can't be lovers. But not all plans can run smoothly and as they're forced to work together, Ajax comes to understand what he hopes the future might hold.
Relationships: Older Gladiator/Younger Gladiator, Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Patricians/Younger Gladiator
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	de futuro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/gifts).



In the ludus of Sextus Gavius, all men are named for heroes. 

The first gladiator purchased by Gavius' grandfather, when he founded the ludus a little over fifty years ago, was a man that he named Hercules. There's a faded fresco inside the lanista's villa that shows Hercules fighting a particularly large lion, a colossal beast with teeth as long as a man's forearm, though no one's sure if that ever really happened or not. Hercules had long since died in the Naples arena when the third generation of Gavii took its place at the head of the ludus - there's no one there now who's old enough to remember Hercules, and that fresco is all he left behind. Ajax knows better than to believe he'll be remembered any differently himself, and that's if they remember him at all.

They've had men named Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, and all the names that Gavius can conjure out of tales of myth and legend. Until recently, their champion was a man by the name of Castor; there was a Pollux once, too, bought at the same auction and given a name that matched, though every story Ajax has heard over the years says they weren't twins to match the names. Pollux died on the sand in his second match and Castor survived there twenty years or more, till some rich man bought his freedom and took him away. Now, Ajax is their best. And he knows he'll have to prove it every time he fights. 

He's the tallest man in the ludus; he's so tall that he has to bend his head at almost every door he meets. He's the strongest man in the ludus; the governor once called a test of strength instead of fighting, open to all who cared to enter, and Ajax won ahead of every other man who tried. He's one of their oldest, too, and he'd made enough money in prizes years ago to pay his way to freedom. He used to think that he had nowhere else to go, and so he stayed instead. Now he'd like to leave, but there's a reason that he's staying.

That reason is Troilus. They'll both leave here, or neither of them will.

\---

Ajax remembers his childhood perhaps more fondly than most gladiators do. 

Most of the men he knows were born to slavery, or else brought to it relatively early on, and for some their life of training and fighting, the crowd's adulation and treatment as precious possessions, is better than anything else they could have hoped for - they might have found themselves sent to mines or quarries and died ten years earlier in a cave in in the dark, so he understands their position. Ajax, though, was taken from his village at fifteen or so years of age. He knows the people he knew there are probably dead now, but sometimes he still dreams of the snow.

He remembers his childhood fondly, and maybe somewhat wistfully, but he doesn't talk about it. But until that day not quite two years ago, when Gavius brought home a Pictish slave, he'd tried hard not to think about it for really quite some time. 

There were six new slaves in all that day: three were for the villa and three were for the ludus. Ajax remembers watching the trainers bring in the three new men, two of whom were scarred like they'd been trained for the life under previous owners, and one who just seemed...different. He wasn't precisely short by most men's standards but he certainly seemed smaller than most of the gladiators there, all lean muscle under pale skin with long dark hair that hung almost as far as his waist. He seemed younger, too, maybe twenty years old, and the other two replied in accented Latin when they were spoken to, but the words the third said weren't even close. Ajax sighed and went back to his swordplay, a wooden gladius against a wooden man though that wasn't really his chosen weapon, and he tried not to think about the words he'd heard. It had been a long time buy he'd still understood them, even though he wished he hadn't.

"You think maybe he's from Gaul or something?" Telemachus asked, as they sat down to dinner that night. "Germania?"

"Does he _sound_ Germanian to you?" Orestes replied. "Hector is Germanian. Does he _sound_ like Hector?"

Telemachus shrugged. "Maybe?" he said. "You don't know. Do you speak Germanian?"

Ajax sighed again. "He's not Germanian," he said. He sat back and threw his spoon into his bowl. "He's a Pict." 

"And how do you know that, genius? Are you a secret oracle?"

He stood. He glanced between them, one man to the next - from Telemachus the skilled retiarius to Orestes the murmillo. He'd started off a murmillo himself, many years before, with a great unwieldy shield that he supposed was meant to mimic the one that Ajax carried in the myths, but Gavius had seen an opportunity; he'd had armour made from iron and leather that fitted Ajax's legs from hip to ankle and his arms from shoulder down to wrist, and he'd put a giant hammer in his hands. Some of the smaller men could barely lift it, let alone swing it, let alone swing it with the accuracy that he could. Castor had been feared then for his skill with a sword that would leave a man bleeding into the sand, but Ajax could crush a man's skull with one well-aimed blow. Frankly, though, sometimes places other than the skull were worse.

"How do I know?" he said. He leaned against the table, both hands pressed down flat, and his weight against the wood made it creak uncertainly. "Because twenty years ago I was Pictish, too." Then he turned and walked away, and went into the baths. Sometimes the pair of them did nothing but frustrate him, or maybe the frustration was his memory.

The following day, in the yard, their head trainer put a wooden sword into Troilus' hands. He looked at it, and he frowned at it, and when the attack came he hopped backwards and fell straight down on his arse. He hauled himself up ready for a new attack and this time the rap to his forearm sent the sword skittering across the ground, straight to Ajax's feet. When Troilus came to retrieve it, when he knelt in the dust and looked up at him, he told him _I'm sorry_ in a dialect so very close to the one he'd known himself that it made him ache inside. And when he stood back up, Ajax still towered over him, the crown of his head not even quite up to his shoulder. Ajax gave him a tense nod, and grey-eyed Troilus went back to his training. Ajax returned to his, too.

The next day, they had Troilus train with Castor. The champion was recovering from a relatively mild injury and while Ajax knew the man had never really kept friends to speak of in the ludus, he'd always fared quite well with teaching; this time, though, his trainee seemed not to grasp the things he did at all, not even in the basics, and not just because he couldn't understand the language. He swore viciously at the wooden sword as he held it flat across his bruised hands, and no one needed to understand his language to see the sentiment behind that. Castor certainly didn't; he laughed out loud and clapped Troilus on the shoulder in a way that very nearly seemed heartening. Perhaps he'd never kept friends as much as he had acquaintances, but that had somehow never made him unfriendly.

On the third day, the sky opened with a great thunderous crack and it rained so hard that they could barely see past a sword's length in front of them. They did train for a while, weapons slipping in their hands, feet slipping on the ground, but when the rain didn't subside by the afternoon they were dismissed into the baths to wash and warm back up, and distract themselves till it was time to eat. Troilus sat apart from the others, trying to tease the knots from his long wet hair with his fingers spread out like a makeshift comb, and Ajax watched him from the pool where he'd settled with Orestes and Telemachus. When he'd arrived in Naples, he'd still had long hair just like that, hanging all the way down to his waist; they'd cut it off before they'd sent him to the fighting pits where he'd started off, and he'd never been permitted to let it grow again. He found himself hoping, oddly, that they let Troilus keep his.

"He's pretty," Telemachus said. 

"He's useless," Orestes replied. 

"Were you any good when you arrived?"

"I was fucking dreadful. But I wasn't like that." 

Ajax snorted. He shook his head and he rubbed his mouth, not quite to hide his smile. He'd always been a fighter himself, he thought, since before he'd been brought south from what his captors had called Caledonia. He'd always been big, the tallest in his village already by his thirteenth year, and then he'd just kept growing. And Troilus, or whatever his name had been before that, who sat there naked at the far side of the room, really was quite pretty by comparison; the Neapolitan sun would turn his skin ruddy soon enough but for the moment he was pale and lithe and fine of features, with a good sized cock that Ajax would not have minded sucking. He didn't suppose that was on offer but even if it had been, he knew better. He was thirty-four years old, he thought, or perhaps a little younger - time had seemed to merge together and it wasn't like he understood more written words than it took a read their names. He was thirty-four years old and he wasn't sure he'd live to thirty-five; he was almost sure that Troilus wouldn't see out the year.

Still, he stood himself up and he waded through the pool toward him, and Troilus' gaze was drawn. He watched him, toying with the ends of his long hair, and Ajax leaned down to set his comb on the bath's stone edge beside his hip. His own relatively short hair didn't really need it, he told himself, though he'd made a habit of combing it anyway just to keep his hands busy. However long he lasted, he thought, the new boy would get more use from it. 

" _Thank you_ ," Troilus said, in his own language, with a wry twist to his mouth that said he believed Ajax wouldn't understand him. 

"Thank you," Ajax told him, and he patted him in the centre of his bare chest. "Thank you," he repeated, and Troilus frowned. 

"Thank you?" he replied, enunciating slowly, and Ajax nodded. 

"Good," he said. "You're welcome." And then he turned his back and walked away through the water, back to Orestes and Telemachus, and he watched him run the comb through his long hair. When Orestes started snickering, Ajax bloodied his nose with a casual elbow, but really all that did was make him use his mouth to laugh out loud instead. 

Another four days passed. The other two new men had rough technique that said they'd been brought to Naples from the provinces, but they both seemed to have a raw kind of talent; Troilus, on the other hand, was just as poor each day as he'd been on the last. Perhaps worse, Ajax thought, as Troilus lost his sword again and winced as Castor's fist connected with his ribs. Castor wasn't going easy on him, and no one in the ludus would have expected him to. Castor, former champion of Naples, current champion in the house of Sextus Gavius, was expected to teach him the hard way until the trainers decided otherwise, but Troilus' ever more sunburnt skin was also ever more bruised. As much as he tried not to, Ajax couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

When training was done for the day and they left the yard to bathe and then eat, Troilus was still kneeling in the dirt. Ajax, fool that he was, told his more foolish friends to go ahead without him and then went back out to him. He held out a hand. And when Troilus' face turned up toward him, there was an ugly purple bruise across one cheekbone and blood that filled up the white of one eye. Even looking like that, beaten, with dust in his hair, he was still pretty. Even looking like that, with a bloody split in his bottom lip, Ajax felt a tug of want he told himself that he'd ignore. He'd make himself ignore it.

They took each other by the wrist. Ajax helped him to his feet. And Troilus, despite the split in his lip, smiled up at him just faintly. From the look of it, it was almost enough to open up the split again. 

"Thank you," he said, his pronunciation careful. 

Ajax laughed, surprised, and he clapped him on the shoulder. "You're welcome," he replied, and he gestured to the door that led through to the baths. Troilus nodded, and he limped toward it. Ajax followed after. 

He'd told himself he'd ignore that want. He'd even really meant it. But as he watched him strip off his subligaria and slip into the bath, as he watched his eyes slip closed and his lips part in relief, he wasn't quite sure how long that resolve would last. 

\---

It was two days after that when Troilus' presence in the ludus finally made sense. 

He'd been beaten again, quite literally, and once training was done Castor took Troilus' wooden sword away for him so that he wouldn't have to try to wrap his bruised fingers back around its hilt. Ajax watched Castor haul Troilus to his feet - the champion was a big man, sandy-haired with an easy smile and more wins in the arena to his name by then than two thirds of the others put together. Ajax wasn't jealous of the winning; he fought lower down the card than their champion did, and with a fraction less frequency, but he'd managed to keep his life and all his limbs intact thus far. What he was jealous of was Troilus' bare arm around Castor's neck, Troilus' ribs pressed against his, as he helped him walk inside. He told himself to ignore it, but it was a difficult feeling to ignore.

He watched Troilus strip slowly, with a wince on his face so broad it bared his teeth. He watched him step down into the bath and hiss as the steaming water found all the places that his skin was grazed. Then he picked up his comb, the one that Ajax had given him, and when he tried to run it through his hair the grip of his bruised fingers wasn't strong enough. It slipped from his hand to the bottom of the water and he stared down at it, forlorn. 

Ajax grimaced. He rose and he waded over to him, ducked down under the water and came back up with the comb in his hand. A moment's gentle nudging and Troilus turned as he sat there, chest-deep in the water, and Ajax settled down behind him with the comb still in his hand. He ran it through Troilus' hair, root to tip, teased a little at the tangles, let his fingertips rub lightly at his scalp and at one shoulder and at the back of his neck. And he told himself no, all he was doing there was helping and barely even that. But the truth was that when he set the comb aside and he raked Troilus' long hair back with all his fingers, when he braided it neatly down the length of his back, it wasn't altruism he was feeling. 

"Why are you here?" he asked, though he knew Troilus wouldn't understand him. He settled his hands at his shoulders, his big palms making him look smaller than he was, and he rubbed there, firm but not hard, the way some of the trainers might when they stretched out for a post-match massage. "You're terrible with a sword. You're a fucking disaster. You're going to die. What can you do?" He sighed heavily. He rested his forehead down against the damp crown of Troilus' head. " _You can't use a sword. What_ can _you do?_ " he asked, his voice lower, but this time the language changed and Troilus' shoulders tensed under his hands. He turned. He frowned at him. 

" _You understand_?" he said. 

" _Yes, I understand_ ," Ajax replied.

Troilus stood. He'd perhaps have liked to have done so quickly, but his tight muscles full of aching bruises robbed him of some of his intended drama, and he frowned down hard at Ajax. And for a moment, he thought that he might curse at him, ask him why he hadn't told him that they shared a language earlier, maybe struck him - if he hadn't fought back, he might have managed to bloody his lip or his nose or make one eye swell up. But Troilus just shook his head at him with a look on his face like raw fucking betrayal. 

" _I use a bow_ ," he said. " _I ride a horse_." And then he turned, and he groaned as he stepped up out of the pool to leave him there. 

"Sagittarius," Ajax said, as he watched him go, then he turned to Orestes and Telemachus with a bemused smile on his face. He stretched his arms out wide along the edge of the pool and he shook his head at them. "He's a fucking sagittarius," he said, gesturing after him. "And we wondered why he couldn't use a sword?"

The following day, they gave him a bow and six arrows all with blunted tips, and two men in full padded armour stood twenty paces away from him. Even with his badly bruised fingers, Troilus' arrows hit their mark: belly, heart and forehead, one man and then the next in incredibly short order. Once he'd retrieved the arrows, he loosed them again once the men were in motion and he seemed to find that no more of a challenge. And the next day, when they brought him a horse as well as a bow, he frowned until Ajax stepped in to translate the fact he couldn't use a Roman saddle. Once it had been taken off, he rode the horse bareback, changing its direction with nudges of his thighs as his arrows found their marks again. He was an excellent shot. He was an excellent rider. And until two months ago, they never found a reason to put a sword in his hand again. 

During the daytime, as Ajax swung his hammer, or a training sword, or wrestled with the others, Troilus practiced with his bow. He could loose an arrow from one side of the yard and have it clear their heads and strike a target set against the opposite wall. He could shoot a cup of water balanced on another man's head and drench him with it, or hit any target that their trainers named. And when they went into the baths to wash...after the first few days, as his bruises started healing now his training had changed, his anger toward Ajax seemed to wane. He waded through the pool to the three of them and they watched him come. He smiled faintly and he told Ajax, " _Thank you_." Then he glanced at Orestes and Telemachus and he said, "Thank you," too. 

In Troilus' first games, just a few simple matches for the governor's wife's birthday celebration, they stripped him naked, shaved off every bit of hair below his neck, and painted him in broad blue swirls that did not resemble anything from his former home except stories people told of it. Ajax saw him from the iron gates that led below to the gladiators' holding cells; he saw him naked and on horseback, as he killed three men using only four arrows, and the fourth he'd only fired to keep a man from running. With the correct weapon in his hands, he was almost more deadly than any of the rest of them. And when they passed by each other in the tunnel after he was done, Troilus coming in out of the sun and Ajax going into it, there was a moment when their gazes met. 

" _Don't die_ ," Troilus told him, all bare skin and the blue paint that was rubbing off into his hair, which Ajax had tucked into a braid for him that morning. He'd have liked to have rubbed himself against him like maybe it would bring him luck or at least a happy death, his own bare chest against Troilus' and fuck the blue paint getting everywhere. He'd have liked to have shoved him up against the tunnel wall, hefted him up so his legs could wrap around his waist, and had him there before he went out fighting. All that smooth-shaved skin against him would have felt good, he thought - Gavius ordered his hair kept short and his face kept bare, but no other part of him was shaved like Troilus was. He'd have liked to have run his hands over him, callused fingertips raking at his thighs and his hips and the perfect shaven skin at the base of his cock. He'd have liked to have sucked him, or fucked him, or kissed his mouth till both of them were breathless, and for a second he was almost certain that Troilus saw that in his face. 

" _I'll try not to_ ," he replied, instead of doing any part of that. And then he went outside into the glaring sun to fight. 

He didn't die. It wasn't even close. But when he came back in, covered in blood and bone and hair that wasn't his, he knew how easily it might be any of them's turn to die. It was always someone's turn, he thought; in the end, death came for all of them. 

In the baths, when they returned to the ludus, he saw Troilus swallow nervously as he made his way toward him. Ajax stood, and he set his jaw, and he looked at him; with the paint gone, with his hair hanging loose and wet around his shoulders, with his smooth skin painted gold by the flickering lamps, he seemed perfect. 

" _Do you want to go to bed with me_?" Troilus asked him, straightforwardly, with a blush in his cheeks like he felt immodest though they both knew no one else would understand. And he'd have liked to have said yes. For once, given they'd both won in the arena, perhaps their guards would have let them share Ajax's room just for the night instead of locking their ironwork doors and keeping them apart. But he'd already lost two lovers to the sword, and he hadn't even seen them die. He'd lost two lovers and he hadn't even said goodbye.

" _No_ ," he replied, with a wrench to his gut, and he clenched his hands into fists down by his sides. He turned and he walked away, a trail of wet footprints on the floor in his wake. 

Perhaps Castor had always had the right idea, he thought, being friendly but not friends. That way losing people almost wouldn't feel like loss at all. 

\---

Months passed.

Sometimes, Troilus sat down to dinner with him and Orestes and Telemachus, and from a safe remove he helped him with his Latin. Telemachus taught him all the names of all the weapons and the types of fighters who used each one of them; Orestes taught him how to swear. And when Gavius brought new men in to learn to fight and replace others who'd been killed or sold, Ajax leaned in by his ear and translated the tales he told that came with their new names. 

"Who am I named after?" Troilus asked, one night, in halting Latin. 

"A Trojan prince," Ajax replied. "Some say he was the god Apollo's son." 

"And you?"

"A Greek hero. Famed for his strength."

Troilus looked at him across the table, smiling faintly. " _Yours suits you better_ ," he said, his language slipping back just for a moment, and Ajax didn't try to tell him just how much he disagreed with that. Troilus, Prince of Troy, had been beautiful just like he was; Ajax, on the other hand, would never live up to his namesake. 

A year passed. Another one, just like all the others that had passed before it in the ludus. A year of conversations, glances, and the gnawing feeling in his gut that not touching him almost didn't help at all. He learned all about him, and the home he'd come from that the Romans had burned, friends and loved ones scattered through the empire. It was a familiar story: Ajax had one of his own almost exactly like it, which he told him in return.

Ajax fought each match in single combat, or occasionally paired with Orestes against a matched pair of retiarii. Troilus fought each match naked and on horseback, bright blue swirls painted over his skin, sometimes with others as they reenacted battles, and sometimes just him against a band of condemned men. Others came and went, killed or sold. Nothing had changed, and everything had. It was hard to pretend that when he stroked himself at night, he wasn't thinking about Troilus. 

"Where do they take you?" Troilus asked him, one afternoon in the sun as they broke training for water. When Ajax frowned, he added, "At night, sometimes. They take Castor, or Icarus, or you. Where do they take you?"

"Rich men's houses," he replied, with a shrug. 

"To fight?"

"Not often, no." 

"For sex, then?"

Ajax chuckled wryly. "For sex," he agreed. 

"With each other?"

"Sometimes. But more often there's a serving girl, or a prostitute, or they let their guests take a turn with us." He finished off his water, and the nearest trainer ladled out another cup for him to sip at while they rested. "As the champion, Castor's the most popular, but some prefer Icarus."

"Because he's blonde?" 

Ajax shrugged. "Because he looks like a statue," he replied. "Except he has a huge cock." 

"So do you." 

Ajax laughed. He shook his head. "Have you ever seen a statue look like me?" he said.

Troilus looked at him over the brim of his cup. He shook his head. "No," he said, and his gaze slid down. His cheeks flushed, even pink with the sun as they already were. "But..." And Ajax laughed it off, and Troilus tried smiling, but there was something in the strained look on his face that made his mind whir oddly.

They went back to training after that, at opposite sides of the yard. But when he went to bed that night and shoved his hand between his thighs, he was thinking about it - it had been more than a year, and maybe now the two of them were almost friends, but the look on Troilus' face really hadn't been teasing. Ajax couldn't help but wonder if Troilus still wanted him even close to the way that he was wanted. 

Another month and Castor was injured - a fleet-footed Persian from another ludus put a spear into his shoulder and from what he said after, he'd won but bled until he'd passed out in the dirt next to the Persian's body. The surgeon who'd saved his arm had been overpriced, so Gavius said as he ranted his way around the ludus, and Castor likely wouldn't heal in time for the governor's games. And so, that night, the sixth after Castor's injury, Ajax wasn't too surprised to find he was the one they took from his room instead. Castor wasn't fit, so someone had to take his place.

He recognised the villa when he was escorted inside, his jaw freshly shaved and skin lightly oiled, though he couldn't have said who its owner was by name. He recognised the man, though, when he gestured a rather informal greeting to Gavius while they loitered in the atrium. There was a fountain there, and a number of guests with cups of wine meandered about it, and when he spotted that the serving girls were naked he understood precisely the nature of the party he'd been brought to. A woman trailed her fingers over his bare chest as she passed by and he thought he'd probably be ushered into some side room within minutes, and once the appropriate guests were gathered he'd be stripped with a perfectly nice girl in his lap to whom he felt no attraction whatsoever. If he was lucky, it would be one who knew how to make it look good - that way he wouldn't have to do all of the work. In some ways, fighting was easier.

He was right and he was wrong, as it turned out. He was right that it was that kind of party: when the villa's owner returned to guide them through it, there were men and women here and there in all manner of stages of undress, with hands in all kinds of places. He was wrong about his part there, though: they took him through one final doorway, where he ducked his head like he always did, and out into one final courtyard, a garden bordered on all sides by an elaborate colonnade. In the centre of the garden, on a large mosaic that looked like all the gods up on Olympus, there was a circle of six stools - five of them occupied - around a low divan. There was a man kneeling on the divan, on all fours, head down against his arms with his arse in the air, facing away from him. Each man on each stool was sitting there naked. It was _that_ kind of party, he supposed, just in a slightly different way. 

"They're not apt to throttle us all if you leave them here alone, are they?" the owner asked, as he started pulling off his tunic. 

"They know better than that, Varo," Gavius replied. "Don't you, Ajax?"

Ajax bowed his head. "Of course," he said, though his gaze was straying to the man on the divan. Another gladiator, from what they'd said, and somehow his cursory glance at him in the moonlight in the open courtyard garden hadn't told him who it was, perhaps because he hadn't wanted it to. His stomach sank; it was Troilus. And once Gavius had departed past two reasonably large men who were restricting access at the doors, and once Varo had removed his clothes and sat down on the empty stool, Ajax stepped into the circle. 

"You know what to do," Varo said, and Ajax supposed he did; this wasn't his first party and Troilus wasn't face down and arse up on a patrician's divan for the artistry of it, after all. He pulled almost numbly at the knots and folds of his subligaria until he could drop it to the mosaic-covered ground, then he untied his sandals and left them behind him, too. He went to the couch and he knelt there behind him, ran his hands over the backs of both his thighs and as his gaze moved down Troilus' spine, he caught the shine of oil and come at his cleft and his balls and down on the upholstery. 

He'd have asked for oil, except when he parted Troilus' cheeks he knew he wouldn't need it. The rim of his hole was pink and slightly swollen, and when he tensed as Ajax's thumbs stroked against him, some other man's seed welled up from in him and trickled down his perineum. A quick glance at the men sitting around them said maybe they'd all had a turn before he'd arrived, and now they wanted to see him fucked with something bigger. So, as much as that turned his fucking stomach, Ajax took a breath and bit his lip and took a moment to sit back on his heels and stroke himself. It didn't take long for him to harden, looking at Troilus kneeling there in front of him like he'd imagined oh so many times. Then he sat back up and he ran the length of his erection against Troilus' cleft, he spread his cheeks and rubbed his length over his mistreated rim, then pressed his tip against it. He pressed against him, spreading his cheeks wide with both his hands, feeling how little resistance there was. If they hadn't all had him, maybe they'd plied him with wine, and he suspected that it might actually be both things. 

He pushed inside. Ajax could see that his cock was bigger than any of the other men's, longer, thicker, and though Troilus' rim didn't try to keep him out at all, he understood that it would be a tight fit. He wasn't wrong; he'd been loosened and slickened by who knew how many fingers and cocks, but Troilus' hole still stretched taut around him. He heard him gasp, and one of the men chuckled at it, and Ajax felt a spike of anger in his chest so hot and sharp that he could almost have turned and struck the man who'd done it. He didn't, though, and not just because it was much more than his life was worth to do so, and not only because he knew his actions would also reflect poorly on Troilus, but because the truth was that he wanted him and he didn't want to stop. He pushed into him, heartsick, his breath already unsteady, and let his hands slip up to brace him at his waist. 

The men talked while he did it. A girl came around with a jug of wine and poured for them, her gaze studiously averted from the two of them fucking, and Varo and his friends all laughed and drank and talked about some kind of business deal that Varo was intent on making, about which Ajax could not have cared less if he'd tried. What he cared about was how he could feel each of Troilus' hitching breaths as he held him there, his big hands at his waist. It came to him as he fucked him that he thought of him as small but he was easily as big as all the other men there in the room, only leaner and with that long dark braid that hung forward, down over his shoulder. He reached for it, wrapped the end around his fist and Troilus moaned, and that same man chuckled and leaned forward, reached underneath and gave Troilus' cock an amused stroke or two. 

"Look at this!" he said. "He's got hard again. These gladiators, Varo, really. The stamina."

A couple of the others laughed, and they drank some more, and Ajax fucking burned to push that hand away from Troilus. But he kept his own hands steady and he fucked him, deeply, like he knew men like this always liked to see. They liked to see his cock almost slip from inside before he shoved back in, and that same man proved the point; he came closer, and he slid one hand over Ajax's abdomen, down to the place where he was thrusting inside, so he could feel how tight Troilus' rim was around him. Then he sat back down and had another drink, and conversation moved on with him in it. 

Ajax fucked him. And there were men in the room, yes, but their attention wandered into an argument, money and business, things Ajax's training really hadn't covered. All he knew about money was how much he'd won, and the fact he could afford to buy his freedom from all this if he really wanted to, except he had no idea where in the world he'd go. He didn't want a new life, trying to navigate a Roman world he'd never really lived in, and his home in the north couldn't really be his home again. In Gavius' ludus he had food and drink and a bed to sleep in, Orestes and Telemachus to annoy him amicable from day to day, and all the tales he still translated when new men arrived, leaning close in by Troilus' ear though he hadn't needed that in quite some time. His only skill was with a hammer, and not one that a carpenter might use but one that weighed as much as some men did. And he had Troilus. Perhaps, he thought, he had Troilus, for as long as they both stayed alive. No other man in the ludus had him, at least, though men might have him out of it.

He fucked him. There were men in the room but soon enough they'd almost stopped watching and Ajax found he didn't mind. Soon enough, his thrusts lacked their previous theatre; he pushed in and ground against him, slow and deep, as he spread the fingers of one hand between his shoulderblades. He dragged that hand down, almost gasping, fingers pressing, and he rubbed there at his coccyx, firmly, maddeningly, until Troilus started pushing back against him. Soon it wasn't a performance, not anymore; Varo and his men talked, and they dressed, spilled wine on the mosaics and then left with a slap of one hand against Ajax's arse. The serving girl vanished with them, barely seen and even less heard. And Ajax should have stopped once they were gone, he supposed, but he didn't. He reached one hand forward and he wrapped it tight around Troilus' cock and Troilus jerked against it, surprised, the sound he made as he came over his fingers almost like he'd had a spear stuck in his side. His hole seized around him, again and again, as he buried his face against the fucking divan, and then Ajax came, too, inside him, shoved in deep, just like all those other men had. He supposed he was exactly like them, really: taking everything that he could get. 

They stayed like that for a moment, for a long moment, Ajax still inside him and Troilus' knees spread wide. It was a warm night, and he could see the sweat on Troilus' skin in the moonlight, and a breeze blew through and made him shiver, made both of them shiver against each other. He'd wanted this for months, he supposed, though he'd wanted it somewhere more private. And then he eased back, and he pulled out, and he stroked Troilus' slick rim with the first two fingers of one hand. He felt the muscle twitch against his fingertips and a low flare of heat in Ajax's gut said he'd have liked to have pushed his fingers in and fucked him like that, too, let them brush against that place he knew he'd have inside him until he came again, teary-eyed and almost painful. He didn't want to hurt him, no, but at least it would be memorable if he made him come until he couldn't anymore. 

Slowly, Troilus pushed himself up onto his knees. He leaned back against Ajax's chest and somewhere inside, behind his sternum, he felt something pull in tight. 

"Is it always like that?" Troilus asked, and Ajax winced. He wrapped his arms around him, from behind, and closed his eyes. 

"Not always," he replied. "I won't lie: sometimes it is. But not always." And when Troilus turned his head, just far enough to look at him all out of focus with one grey eye, Ajax tried to smile though he probably grimaced. Troilus squeezed Ajax's hands as they sat there at his waist and then he looked away again. 

Gavius found them there like that, but he didn't say a word about it; he just told them to dress, so they did, and then they went back to the ludus as if nothing had happened at all. But as Ajax lay down on the mattress in his room behind the locked door, in the low light that flickered through the thick iron lattice, he knew something had happened. 

He'd just done the thing he'd wanted since almost the day that Troilus had arrived. He'd just done it in the worst way possible. 

\---

In the morning, Gavius came down into the ludus. He talked with their trainers in semi-hushed tones as the men swung wooden swords and blunted tridents. They gestured at Castor, sitting by the water butt, a heavy dressing wrapped tight around his injured shoulder. And then they all turned to look quite obviously at Ajax. 

"You'll take Castor's place in the governor's games," Gavius told him, once they'd waved him closer. "But there's a catch: he's ordered two teams. You'll fight in a pair, one big and one small." Then he looked across the yard at Troilus, and with a lurch in his gut Ajax understood. 

Against his better judgement, he opened his mouth to protest, but Gavius held up one hand to keep him quiet. "I know," he said. "He's a sagittarius. That's what I told the governor, but what he wants he gets." He grimaced as if he understood the implications well, and he gestured vaguely in Troilus' general direction. "You have a week to train him. Then you'll fight." And as Gavius left, Ajax let the fact sink in: Troilus' life was in his hands. 

The trainers tied them at the wrist with a length of rope that hung between them no longer than a gladius, to represent the chain that would bind them inside the arena. They tied Ajax by his left hand and Troilus by his right, then gave each of them a blunted sword to use. One-handed, even Ajax couldn't swing his huge hammer properly, and though he trained with swords quite rarely he was still better with one in his hand than Troilus was; left hand, right hand, it didn't matter which hand Troilus used, or that he held it in his non-dominant one thanks to how they'd been bound, and everyone there knew it. Then the trainers did the same with Orestes and Telemachus, to give them opponents to train against. 

That first day was brutal, though not as bad as the second, and each time that Ajax glanced his way, Troilus was looking straight back at him. They fought, and Ajax tried to teach him, almost desperately, but with a sword in his hand instead of a bow, they both knew he had no hope at all. When they all sat together for dinner, no one said the one thing that they must all have thought: the only chance Ajax had of living was to cut Troilus loose, take off his hand at the wrist and beat both of their opponents. Maybe Troilus would die from the wound and maybe he wouldn't, but he doubted any of them could see another way. He wouldn't do it, no, but he hated the fact he considered it.

In the daytime, they trained, but they saw no improvements. They tried to figure out a method for Troilus to stay out of the way and let Ajax work, but the tether was too short for that and every time they fought, Orestes and Telemachus would beat them. They fought until dusk, till they were tired and they ached, as if anything they did would help. He could see it in Troilus' eyes each time he helped him from the ground: he believed they'd die, or that one of them would. Ajax suspected he knew which one he thought it would be.

In the daytime, they trained, and once night began to fall, they went inside. Once the rope was untied and their clothes came off, they settled in the baths and didn't speak, because Ajax supposed neither of them could conjure up a single word to say in either language that they knew. He'd fucked him in that villa, Varo's villa, and now this. The fact he'd been ordered to do it didn't make it more forgivable.

The days passed quickly. Far too quickly, like the gods themselves were stealing it away from them. He'd never wanted Castor's place as Gavius' champion and all that he could think about at night in bed was Troilus, his bruised fingers in those first days after he'd arrived, his bruised face and bloody eye. All he could think about was Peleus, the red-haired secutor whose smile and laugh had lived on in Ajax's memory long after he was dead, and Hylas, who they'd brought from Nubia to wield twin swords only to die in the arena two years later. He'd seen Peleus' broken body once the fight was done but Hylas had lived almost a week before Gavius' hired physician had pronounced him a lost cause. Once he'd seen him dead in the physician's room, Ajax had told himself that there'd be no more lovers. Perhaps he felt something for Troilus, if he cared at all to examine it, but he supposed he'd kept his promise: he wouldn't lose his lover if Troilus died, at least not in a physical sense. But he'd be damned if he could let that happen.

The day came. In the morning, they took the two of them down to the baths; one of the villa men shaved every inch of Troilus, from his faintly prickly cheeks down to his ankles, while another worked on Ajax's jaw, but no matter how he tried Ajax's gaze kept wandering. Each time he looked at Troilus, Troilus was looking straight back. And when the men finished, and when they left, for a few minutes they were there alone together. 

There were things he would have liked to say: he might have apologised for the fact he wasn't sure how he could save him, or for the things he'd done in Varo's house that night, or for the months, the years, even more than that, that he'd wasted trying to pretend he didn't want him. He could have told him he wasn't sure he'd wanted anything as much as he wanted him to live, or how much he regretted that he hadn't paid Troilus' way to freedom before the governor had set the match and tied everyone's hands with his desires to see them fight - Gavius couldn't let him go now or he'd risk reprisal. There were things he would have liked to say but Troilus kissed him, and those things all fell away. 

They didn't have long, but they didn't waste what time they had. There was oil they'd used for shaving and Troilus fetched it, and he bent himself over a table, and Ajax drizzled it between his cheeks, against his hole. He pushed in with his first finger, pushed inside and felt how fucking hot he was, how tight, then added more oil and did it again, again, until Troilus muffled a desperate sort of sound against his arm and pushed back hard against him. They didn't stay there long; Ajax led him to a nearby column, broad stone that helped in holding up the ceiling, and he pushed him up against it, kissed him, bit his lip as Troilus' hands slid down his spine to grip his arse and pull him flush against him. Ajax was so much taller but once Troilus had hopped up and wrapped his legs around his waist, once he was caught there between Ajax and the column and held up by his big hands and straining shoulders, that difference didn't seem to matter. And a little more oil, perhaps a little more than a little, till it was dripping on the floor and smeared all over Ajax's hands and Troilus' thighs, and it was almost easy to push into him. Troilus gasped and clasped at his shoulders, pulling tight. Ajax, for his part, almost came right then and there. 

They didn't have long, and it didn't take long; by the time the guards came in to take them, they were done, their come and all the stray oil washed cursorily away. All they had left to do was dip their fingers in the bright blue paint and swirl it on each other's skin, until they matched, then steal one last kiss before before the end.

The day came. It was hot, and the armour they wore was heavy, and the chain around his left wrist chafed, and under his helmet sweat dripped into his eyes. The crowd roared as the match began and they made their way toward their two similarly bound opponents. Ajax reached out and squeezed at Troilus' hand, felt him squeeze back, and smiled under his visor. And when their opponents came toward them, he expected it to be a different kind of fight; he'd played it through inside his head and worked out all the ways that Troilus might be the one who'd leave there living, but Ajax saw something then that made him laugh out loud. It seemed Asti, Castor's rival, was just as ill-paired with his smaller partner as Ajax was.

The ensuing fight wasn't pretty at all. Troilus lost his sword and trailed behind Ajax for several minutes before he could scrape it back up again, and Asti's companion - they didn't even know his name - was dragged around like a dog behind their champion while the two larger men clashed. The sun beat down and Ajax had to pull off his helmet or lose his life to the salt of sweat burning in his eyes, and when he threw the thing, heavy as it was, it collided with their smaller opponent's similarly helmet-lacking head and knocked him out unconscious. His fall pulled on the chain between Ajax's wrist and Troilus' and it dragged them closer to each other, thrust Ajax's shoulder against his and Troilus yelped as his was wrenched out of joint. And then Asti came forward, as Ajax was still scrambling to pull himself upright. He couldn't turn for the falling weight of Asti's comrade pulling down against his arm and he understood, sickly and immediately: Asti's sword was raised, and Ajax's neck was bared, and he'd be dead only a moment before he dispatched Troilus, too, thanks to some fucking idiotic fight the governor had concocted to keep himself amused. 

He expected to die, as he supposed he'd expected to die since he'd arrived in the ludus and been given his new name. He expected to die just like so many men he'd known had, and then he'd fade into obscurity until, perhaps, the name found itself reused. But he didn't die; Troilus thrust himself forward and took Asti's blade instead, in a gush of blood that seemed to heat the air as it splashed across Ajax's chest. And he roared, he fucking _roared_ , as he bared his teeth and he pushed himself forward. In a moment, he'd buried his sword down through Asti's sternum; another strike and the other challenger had been dispatched, too. Then, as his heart thumped in his chest, as dread and iron-sharp dismay shot through him, he fell down to his knees at Troilus' side. 

" _Don't die_ ," he said. He pressed both hands to the gushing fucking wound and while Troilus looked up at him he said again, " _Don't die_." 

Troilus smiled. His blood was everywhere, on his skin and in the sand and _everywhere_. And all he had the strength in him to do was lift one hand and set it over Ajax's. 

" _I'll try not to_ ," he replied. Then he closed his eyes, and Ajax thought that was the end of it - he believed he was gone. But when Gavius' physician came, he wasn't, though no one could say just how long that might last. 

"We'll bring you a woman, if you want," the guard said later, standing there outside his room. "The other winners all got one. You won, right?"

But all Ajax could say was, "Can you bring me Troilus?"

"The lad's in no fit state. The doctor's with him."

"Then can I go to him?"

He remembers how the guard sighed, and shuffled, like there were eighty other places that he'd rather be. "What for?" he asked. "He's passed out and half dead. It's not like he can suck your cock like that." Then he walked away with a mutter about gratitude, about which Ajax found he cared less than nothing. 

All that mattered to him was whether Troilus was going to live or die, and the fact he could do nothing but wait.

\---

In the ludus of Sextus Gavius, all men are named for heroes. 

The first was Hercules. Their most recent champion was Castor, and Ajax was given the name of a great warrior who fought at Troy. Troilus was a prince whose death was prophesied to precede Troy's fall. They're all named for heroes, but the only one that Ajax finds heroic is the one who tried to give his life to save him. 

A week passed after the governor's games, then two weeks. They wouldn't let him see him, though he supposed that didn't come as a surprise; he was their champion now that Castor was free, but that meant almost nothing other than prestige. He'd have given that fucking prestige to any other man in the ludus if it had meant Troilus kept his life. 

Three weeks. Four. He saw him now and then in glimpses, leaning on a guard as he passed by the yard while they were training, and though their gazes met, that was all that they could have. All Ajax knew was he wasn't dead, and perhaps he wasn't dying, but the pallor of his skin and his heavy steps said nothing about that was certain.

It's been five weeks since the games now and as he walks into the baths, he sees him sitting there. He pauses as his heart begins to race and then he goes to him, and each step of the way Troilus' eyes are on him. Each step of the way, his heart beats harder in his chest. 

"That looks awful," he says, as he sits down naked in the water, and he glances at the ugly scar there at his left shoulder. It's still a livid shade of red, like Castor's was before he left, but then Troilus raises his left arm and though he winces, he makes it all the way up above his head. 

"It's not so bad," he tells him. "The doctor says that I can train in a few weeks. Maybe a month. I might fight again in three." And inside Ajax, something hot and almost terrifying rises up. It's a fear that feels a lot like hope.

"So you'll live?" he says. 

Troilus smiles. "Yes, I'll live," he replies. "It will just leave a scar." Then he slides one hand onto Ajax's thigh underneath the water. Underneath the water, he finds Ajax's hand and he wraps his own around it, tight. 

"I'm going to buy my freedom," Ajax says, abruptly. 

Troilus frowns. "Where will you go?" he asks, and as he starts to pull away, Ajax's fingers slip around his wrist. He turns, and he uses one wet hand to turn Troilus' face toward him, his fingertips against his cheek and then slipping into the long hair that's loose around his shoulders. Later, he thinks, he'll comb it out and braid it for him, so it hangs neatly down his back. Now, though, he tangles his fingers into it, and he strokes there at his nape.

"I thought I'd leave that to you," he says. "Two more wins and I'll have enough for both of us. Two more wins and you shouldn't need the doctor, either." And the smile that spreads on Troilus' face somehow makes every fight he's ever won feel worth it. 

He's never wanted to leave before, because where would he have gone to? His only talent's with a weapon in his hands, but he wonders now if that was the Fates' design so he had the means to free them both. Perhaps Troilus can hunt and that's how they'll live, or he'll sell his skills as a bodyguard or a mercenary, or...they'll find a way, somehow now he doesn't doubt that. 

Two more wins and they'll be free. All he has to do is stay alive while Troilus heals. And as Troilus' mouth finds his, as they breathe together, two wins really doesn't seem so very much to ask. 

In the ludus of Sextus Gavius, all men are named for heroes. His name is Ajax, but one day soon he thinks he'd like to take another name. One he hasn't heard in twenty years.

Perhaps he can't go home. But perhaps it's not too late for them to start again somewhere, together.


End file.
